Archive for the ‘Satire’ Category

I hear that today is “Recycle a Blog Post Day” (via Mike Sansone), so I’m pulling a favorite out of the virtual compost pile, preserving our nation’s irreplaceable supply of random words:LOCAL CPA FIRM VOWS TO SWALLOW PRIDE, ACCEPT $28 MILLION
In a tearful virtual press conference held at their corporate headquarters, Roth & Company spokesman Joe Kristan recanted his opposition to targeted tax breaks and vowed to accept massive government subsidies on behalf of the firm.
“We are really excited about the new Microsoft server farm. The bipartisan enthusiasm for taking money from taxpayers and giving it to selected businesses frankly moved us,” said Kristan. “With Microsoft receiving tax breaks worth $40 million to create 50 jobs next year, and maybe 75 eventually, we realized that our 35-employee firm must be eligible for $28 million or so.” While the Microsoft benefits are in the form of tax breaks, said Kristan, “We prefer cash. We’ve already created the jobs and have been doing so for years. We’re willing to swallow our pride and take money for it. We could charge interest and muck up the tax law, but we’re a good corporate citizen. We’ll just take the money.”
Kristan pointed out that it was a better deal for the state than the Microsoft server farm in a number of ways. “We’re using a building that’s already there. You don’t have to put in roads or run fiber lines. Just write us a check. A wire transfer would be fine too.”
Kristan said the firm was committed to creating “dozens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs” eventually — “someday, somehow, somewhere.”
The firm, which was started in 1990, plans to use the money on a number of projects. Kristan said it would be nice to have a couple of fully redundant sets of file servers for the office. “Not so much a server ‘farm’ as a server patio garden,” he explained. The firm also plans to install a state of the art coffee maker to provide fresh brewed coffee from freshly-ground beans on demand. The remainder of the funds are expected to be used to fund energy independence, affordable health care and retirement security for the firm’s owners.
“We thank Governor Culver, Senator Grassley, Congressman Boswell and Senator Gronstal for opening our eyes to the benefits of these targeted incentives,” said Kristan. “We are confident that the necessary legislation will pass. All it will take is for our elected officials to give our proposal the same scrutiny they gave to the proposals by Microsoft and Google.”

In a tearful virtual press conference held at their corporate headquarters, Roth & Company spokesman Joe Kristan recanted his opposition to targeted tax breaks and vowed to accept massive government subsidies on behalf of the firm.
“We are really excited about the new Microsoft server farm. The bipartisan enthusiasm for taking money from taxpayers and giving it to selected businesses frankly moved us,” said Kristan. “With Microsoft receiving tax breaks worth $40 million to create 50 jobs next year, and maybe 75 eventually, we realized that our 35-employee firm must be eligible for $28 million or so.” While the Microsoft benefits are in the form of tax breaks, said Kristan, “We prefer cash. We’ve already created the jobs and have been doing so for years. We’re willing to swallow our pride and take money for it. We could charge interest and muck up the tax law, but we’re a good corporate citizen. We’ll just take the money.”
Kristan pointed out that it was a better deal for the state than the Microsoft server farm in a number of ways. “We’re using a building that’s already there. You don’t have to put in roads or run fiber lines. Just write us a check. A wire transfer would be fine too.”
Kristan said the firm was committed to creating “dozens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs” eventually — “someday, somehow, somewhere.”
The firm, which was started in 1990, plans to use the money on a number of projects. Kristan said it would be nice to have a couple of fully redundant sets of file servers for the office. “Not so much a server ‘farm’ as a server patio garden,” he explained. The firm also plans to install a state of the art coffee maker to provide fresh brewed coffee from freshly-ground beans on demand. The remainder of the funds are expected to be used to fund energy independence, affordable health care and retirement security for the firm’s owners.
“We thank Governor Culver, Senator Grassley, Congressman Boswell and Senator Gronstal for opening our eyes to the benefits of these targeted incentives,” said Kristan. “We are confident that the necessary legislation will pass. All it will take is for our elected officials to give our proposal the same scrutiny they gave to the proposals by Microsoft and Google.”

Des Moines (AP). Economic development officials today called a press conference to discuss the jobs lost this week as a result of the state’s economic development activities.
“Yes, that sucking sound you hear is the sound of jobs leaving Sioux City for South Dakota,” said economic development director Mike Tramontina. “Our ‘bribes for business’ program has had disappointing results when compared to South Dakota’s ‘no income tax’ economic development program.”
Tramontina cited the state’s highest-in-the-nation 12% corporate tax rate and its 8.98% top individual rate as important causes of the job losses. “And if that weren’t bad enough,” said the Director, “the laws are so brutally complex here that nobody wants to hear about our dandy tax credits.”
Tramontina also pointed out that when some businesses are bribed, other businesses suffer. “Sure, I can bribe somebody to open a bar in a rehabbed building. But then I have to find somebody else to bribe when the unsubsidized bar down the street closes because of the state-sponsored competition. So we create new jobs at the new bar, but we lose the jobs at the old one. It’s like treading water.”
He also pointed out that when one business gets a property tax exemption, all of the neighboring businesses have to take up the slack to pay for services for the new one. “Sombody always says ‘the heck with it’ and moves to South Dakota or someplace warm”
Tramontina also set aside a part of his press conference to address the dozens of businesses that don’t even consider moving to Iowa. “Sure, I can brag about some obscure movie being made in Burlington. But we get far less than our share of businesses because of our tax structure. Businesses aren’t stupid. They know that if they come here for the bribes, we’ll be taxing them soon enough to bribe somebody else. It’s like a girl who sees a married guy trying to pick her up in a bar by buying her drinks with his wife’s money. If she’s smart, she’ll know that soon enough he’d dump her for some other new girl, while she pays the tab.”
Tramontina finished his conference by outlining proposals to cement Iowa’s standing as the worst state for new businesses. He boasted how proposals to tax corporations on a “combined” basis will apply the highest corporate tax rate not only to corporations doing business in Iowa, but also to their corporate siblings. “That will make sure the whole corporate group stays the heck away from Iowa.”

The IRS has told Tax Analysts that serious security weaknesses in IRS computer systems had not resulted in unauthorized access of computer systems:

?The IRS has no evidence, after reviewing our audit logs and reviewing our processes and system configurations, that any IRS data was improperly accessed by any unauthorized individuals, either internal or external to the government,? IRS spokesman Bruce Friedland said.

When asked why “Spot Friedland” and “Tabby Friedland” were claimed as dependents on his returns after graduating from college, but not after social security numbers were required for dependents, Friedland said “Who told you?” He refused further comment, and did not respond to questions about why his wife deducted trips to the day spa as medical expenses.